Affairs could not well have been worse for the partners. They would have been willing to give up making gins and devote themselves to selling the rights they had already obtained, but it was difficult to find purchasers for titles which were so openly disregarded on every hand. They found it almost impossible to collect payments for the few machines they did sell, the buyers preferring to be sued, trusting to a jury of their neighbors deciding for them against the unpopular manufacturers, who claimed to control such an important machine as the gin. Whitney tried to sell his patent rights for South Carolina to that state itself, and had the matter brought before the Legislature. It met with better success than usual. “I have been at this place,” he writes in a letter, “a little more than two weeks attending the Legislature. A few hours previous to their adjournment they voted to purchase for the state of South Carolina my patent-right to the machine for cleaning cotton at $50,000, of which sum $20,000 is to be paid in hand, and the remainder in three annual payments of $10,000 each.” To this he added, “We get but a song for it in comparison with the worth of the thing, but it is securing something. It will enable Miller & Whitney to pay their debts and divide something between them.”

This plan of selling the rights to the states seemed to promise better things for the inventor. In December, 1802, he arranged for the sale of similar rights to the state of North Carolina, and a little later a similar agreement was made with Tennessee. But imagine his dismay when the South Carolina Legislature suddenly annulled its contract with him, refused to make any further payments, and began suit to recover what had already been paid him. The current of popular opinion had again set against this firm of two. It was said that a man in Switzerland had invented a cotton-gin before Whitney, and that the main features of his own machine had been taken from others. But there were some upright and honorable men in the South Carolina Legislature, and they finally succeeded in convincing their associates that Whitney had been maligned. In the session of 1804 the Legislature rescinded its latest act in regard to the gin, and testified to its high opinion of Whitney.

The inventor’s faithful partner, Miller, died in 1803. He had stood by Whitney through thick and thin, and had met one buffet after another. In spite of his splendid spirit the ceaseless war to protect their claims had somewhat broken him, and he had despaired of ever receiving justice in the courts. Whitney himself was now receiving some return from the sales to the states, and these enabled him to keep out of debt, but the greater part of his earnings had still to go for the costs of his suits at law.

In December, 1807, the United States Court in Georgia gave a decision in Whitney’s favor against a man named Fort who had infringed on his patent. The words of Judge Johnson in this case became celebrated. “To support the originality of the invention,” said he, “the complainants have produced a variety of depositions of witnesses, examined under commission, whose examinations expressly prove the origin, progress, and completion of the machine of Whitney, one of the copartners. Persons who were made privy to his first discovery testify to the several experiments which he made in their presence before he ventured to expose his invention to the scrutiny of the public eye. But it is not necessary to resort to such testimony to maintain this point. The jealousy of the artist to maintain that reputation, which his ingenuity has justly acquired, has urged him to unnecessary pains on this subject. There are circumstances in the knowledge of all mankind which prove the originality of this invention more satisfactorily to the mind than the direct testimony of a host of witnesses. The cotton-plant furnished clothing to mankind before the age of Herodotus. The green seed is a species much more productive than the black, and by nature adapted to a much greater variety of climate, but by reason of the strong adherence of the fibre to the seed, without the aid of some more powerful machine for separating it than any formerly known among us, the cultivation of it would never have been made an object. The machine of which Mr. Whitney claims the invention so facilitates the preparation of this species for use that the cultivation of it has suddenly become an object of infinitely greater national importance than that of the other species ever can be. Is it, then, to be imagined that if this machine had been before discovered, the use of it would ever have been lost, or could have been confined to any tract or country left unexplored by commercial enterprise? But it is unnecessary to remark further upon this subject. A number of years have elapsed since Mr. Whitney took out his patent, and no one has produced or pretended to prove the existence of a machine of similar construction or use.

“With regard to the utility of this discovery the court would deem it a waste of time to dwell long upon this topic. Is there a man who hears us who has not experienced its utility? The whole interior of the Southern states was languishing and its inhabitants emigrating for want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to age it has presented to us a lucrative employment. Our debts have been paid off, our capitals have increased, and our lands trebled themselves in value. We cannot express the weight of the obligation which the country owes to this invention. The extent of it cannot now be seen. Some faint presentiment may be formed from the reflection that cotton is rapidly supplanting wool, flax, silk, and even furs in manufactures, and may one day profitably supply the use of specie in our East India trade. Our sister states also participate in the benefits of this invention, for besides affording the raw material for their manufacturers, the bulkiness and quantity of the article afford a valuable employment for their shipping.”

Whitney had fought long and hard, and had at last received at least partial justice. But it had been so slow in coming that, when his rights were to a certain extent established, there were only a few years left his patents to run. He had realized for some time that he must look elsewhere for financial returns, and so, in 1798, had begun the manufacture of firearms. He purchased a site for his factory near New Haven, at a place called Whitneyville now, then known as East Rock. Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, ordered 10,000 stand of arms from him, and he contracted to furnish them. At first he met with many difficulties, owing to lack of proper materials and workmen, and his own lack of familiarity with the business. But as time went on the works improved, and Whitney applied his inventive genius to many important improvements. He received other contracts, and eventually the national government came to rely upon his factory for a large part of its war supplies.

In 1812 Whitney applied for a renewal of his patent for the cotton-gin. He set forth the facts that he had received almost no compensation for his invention, that it had made the fortune of many of the Southern states, that it enabled one man to do the work of a thousand men before, but that, placing the value of one man’s labor at twenty cents a day, the whole amount he had received was less than the value of the labor saved in one hour by the use of his machines throughout the country. But again there was opposition from many influential Southern planters, and his application was denied.

The inventor was, however, making money from his factory for firearms, and his personal fortunes had brightened. In 1817 he married Henrietta Edwards, the daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards, of Connecticut. His home life was ideally happy, he was fond of New Haven, and eventually he received increasing evidence that the people of the cotton lands were learning their indebtedness to him, and were anxious to make some restitution for their earlier disregard of his claims. He died January 8, 1825.

The material value of Eli Whitney’s invention can hardly be estimated. It opened a new kingdom to the South. It built up countless acres of hitherto unprofitable land. But in spite of men’s recognition of the value of his cotton-gin, and their instant adoption of it everywhere, he was for years denied his title to it, and had to wage a warfare that is almost without parallel in the history of American inventors.

VII
FULTON AND THE STEAMBOAT
1765-1815

There is a peculiar charm attaching to the figure of Robert Fulton, the attraction that plays about the man who is many-sided, and picturesque on whatever side one looks at him. He was a man at home on both shores of the Atlantic, at a time when such men were rare. He had been taught drawing by Major André, when the latter was a prisoner of war in the little Pennsylvania town of Lancaster. He had hung out his sign as Painter of Miniatures at the corner of Second and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia, under the friendly patronage of Benjamin Franklin. He had lodged in London at the house of Benjamin West, and shown his pictures at the Royal Academy. Two great English noblemen became his allies in scientific studies. Napoleon, as First Consul, bargained with him over his invention of torpedoes. Finally he sent the little Clermont up the Hudson under steam. There was a man of rare ability, one who had many hostages to give to fortune. He was the artist turned inventor, as many another has done, and if he was not as great an artist as Leonardo da Vinci neither was Leonardo as great an inventor as Robert Fulton.

Fulton invented a machine for cutting marble, one for spinning flax, a double inclined plane for canal navigation, a machine for twisting rope, an earth-scoop for canal and irrigation purposes, a cable-cutter, the earliest French panorama, a submarine torpedo boat, and the steamboat. Other men had worked over steamboats, but he reached the goal. He made the steamboat practicable, as Watt had the steam-engine. Above all, he was very fortunate; he found his countrymen ready to welcome the Clermont, and to fall in with his plans, an attitude which had not faced certain men in England and in France who had built similar boats earlier than Fulton. Some engineers have been tempted to call him a lucky amateur, a talented artist who happened to become interested in new methods of navigation. If one grants all this there is still the fact that it was the Clermont’s success that opened the watercourses of the world to steam.

“Quicksilver Bob” he was called as a boy in Lancaster, because he used to buy all that metal he could for experiments. Even then he was many-sided. He made designs for firearms and experimented with guns to learn the carrying distance of various bores and balls. There was a factory in Lancaster where arms were being made for the Continental troops, and “Quicksilver Bob” was given the run of the place. In addition he painted signs to hang before the village shops and taverns.

To simplify his fishing expeditions he made a model of a boat propelled by paddles, and later he built such a boat and used it on the Conestoga River. No one could tell what he would turn to next. When Hessian prisoners were kept in the neighborhood the town boys would go out to look at them, and Robert would make sketches of them. These sketches gave him a local reputation, and his friends were not surprised when at seventeen he left Lancaster to seek his fortune as a painter of portraits and miniatures in Philadelphia.

He was well liked in the city. He had a talent for friendship, which, combined with good looks, more than ordinary intelligence, and most uncommon industry, carried him far. He drew plans for machinery, he designed houses and carriages, he worked as professional painter. Franklin became his patron and adviser. Then illness sent him to the fashionable hot springs of Virginia, and there he heard so much talk of England and of France that he decided to see those countries for himself. Before he left America he bought a farm in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in order to insure a home for his mother and sisters. That done, he sailed for England, with a packet of letters of introduction, in 1786.

In London Fulton professed himself to be an artist, although his thoughts were constantly tending toward inventions. He lived at the house of Benjamin West, and painted, and his portraits were shown at the Royal Academy and at the Society of Artists. Betimes he enjoyed himself in society and in trips to the counties. He journeyed into Devonshire and stayed at Powderham Castle, copying famous pictures there. Wherever he went he made friends, and their influence was constantly helping him forward on what must have been a somewhat precarious career.

Two of these friends, the Duke of Bridgewater and the Earl of Stanhope, were scientists of repute. The Duke owned a great estate, of untold mineral wealth, which had never been properly worked because of lack of transportation facilities. He had recently built several canals on this property, and was at the head of a number of companies which were planning to intersect England with waterways. He interested Fulton in his schemes and gradually weaned his thoughts away from art to civil engineering. The Earl of Stanhope corresponded with him over the possibility of propelling boats by steam, and in these letters Fulton first gave the outlines of the plans he was later to perfect in the Clermont. The Earl was deeply interested, and encouraged the young American to persevere, but for the time Fulton left the steamboat to work out other problems.

The possibility of a great English canal system appealed to him strongly, and in 1794 he obtained an English patent for a double inclined plane for raising and lowering canal boats. Later he took English patents on a machine for spinning flax, and on a new device for twisting hemp rope. There followed others for a machine that should scoop out earth to make canals or aqueducts, for a “Market or Passage Boat” to use on canals, and for a “Dispatch Boat” that should travel quickly. He sent drawings of all these inventions to his influential friends, hoping that they would push them, and he also wrote and published “A Treatise on Canal Navigation.” By this time he would seem to have given up all thought of the artist’s career, and to have turned his talent with the pen to the aid of his mechanical drawings.

The French Revolution was imminent, and Fulton was busy studying the conditions that were leading to it. He believed that Free Trade would tend to abolish many of the difficulties that divided nations, and he wrote a paper on that subject, addressed to the French Directory. He believed in democracy, but he was strongly of the opinion that the young American republic should take no part in the struggle for liberty in Europe. In a letter written in 1794 he says, “It has been much Agitated here whether the Americans would join the French. But I Believe every Cool friend to America could wish them to Remain nuter. The americans have no troublesome Neighbors, they are without foreign Possessions, and do not want the alliance of any Nation, for this Reason they have nothing to do with foreign Politics. And the Art of Peace Should be the Study of every young American which I most Sincerely hope they will maintain.”

But Fulton himself was in a manner to be drawn into the turmoil. When France had quieted somewhat England began that policy of aggression on the sea toward American ships and crews that was to lead to the War of 1812. Fulton’s attention was drawn from canal-building to the possibility of some invention that might tend to subserve peace, and this in time led him to design and build the first torpedo.

Again Fulton’s talent for friendship stood him in good stead. When he had left London for Paris he called upon Joel Barlow, poet and American diplomat, and was urged to take up his residence first at the hotel where the Barlows were staying, and later at their house. For seven years Fulton lived with them, busy about the most diverse matters, and always keenly interested in the struggles of the new and hot-tempered republic. A rich American had bought a tract of central real estate in Paris and had built a row of shops arranged on the two sides of a cloister. Fulton suggested that he add a panorama to the other buildings, and the idea was adopted. Fulton was given charge, and by 1800 he had built and opened the first panorama that Paris had ever seen. The show made money, and the inventor, a perfect Jack-of-all-trades, added another feather to his varicolored cap.

In December, 1797, Fulton had interested his friend Barlow in a machine intended to drive “carcasses” of gunpowder under water. But his first experiments at exploding the gunpowder at a definite moment failed. Then he moved to Havre, where he would have greater opportunity to try out his torpedo-boats, as he christened them. His idea was that if his invention succeeded war would be made so dangerous that nations would be obliged to keep peace. Barlow was able to assist him with money until he had built and actually navigated some of his torpedoes along the coast. When he had satisfied himself, he wrote to the French government, the Directory, offering them his invention for use against their enemies.

The Directory was pleased with the offer, but the government was in so much of a turmoil that it was months before any positive action was taken. At length, on February 28, 1801, Fulton received word from Napoleon, the First Consul, to send his torpedo-boat against the English fleet. He set out; but the English fleet did not come his way, and he spent the summer vainly reconnoitering along the coast. To show the value of his invention he arranged to attack a sloop. This he described in his letter to the French Commission on Submarine Navigation. “To prove this experiment,” he wrote, “the Prefect Maritime and Admiral Villaret ordered a small Sloop of about 40 feet long to be anchored in the Road, on the 23rd of Thermidor. With a bomb containing about 20 pounds of powder I advanced to within 200 Metres, then taking my direction so as to pass near the Sloop, I struck her with the bomb in my passage. The explosion took place and the sloop was torn into atoms, in fact, nothing was left but the buye [buoy] and cable. And the concussion was so great that a column of Water, Smoke and fibres of the Sloop were cast from 80 to 100 feet in Air. This simple Experiment at once proved the effect of the Bomb Submarine to the satisfaction of all the Spectators.”

This exhibition took place in August, 1801, before a crowd of onlookers, and at once established the value of the torpedo. But, as he was unable to attack any English ships, the French government lost interest in his invention, and Napoleon’s scientific advisers reported to him that they regarded the young American as “a visionary.”

At the same time the British government awakened to the great possibilities of Fulton’s device. His old friend, Lord Stanhope, urged that suitable offers be made him. This was ultimately done, and in April, 1804, Fulton left France and returned to London. A contract was drawn up by which he was to put his torpedo at the service of the English government and receive in return two hundred pounds a month and one-half the value of all ships that might be destroyed by his invention.

This arrangement, however, was of short duration. A change of ministry dampened his hopes, and in 1806 the government declined to adopt his invention on his terms. At the same time they tried to suppress this new method of warfare, and to that end made him another offer. Fulton, always an ardent patriot, answered, “At all events, whatever may be your reward, I will never consent to let these inventions lie dormant should my Country at any time have need of them. Were you to grant me an annuity of £20,000 a year, I would sacrifice all to the safety & independence of my Country. But I hope that England and America will understand their mutual Interest too well to War with each other And I have no desire to Introduce my Engines into practice for the benefit of any other Nation.”

He was already eager to return home to work upon his long cherished plans for a steamboat. He continues, “As I am bound in honor to Mr. Livingston to put my steamboat in practice and such engine is of more immediate use to my Country than Submarine Navigation, I wish to devote some years to it and should the British Government allow me an annuity I should not only do justice to my friends but it would enable me to carry my steamboat and other plans into effect for the good of my Country.—It has never been my intention to hide these Inventions from the World on any consideration, on the contrary it has been my intention to make them public as soon as consistent with strict justice to all with whom I am concerned. For myself I have ever considered the interest of America [n] free commerce, the interest of mankind, the magnitude of the object in view and the rational reputation connected with it superior to all calculations of a pecuniary kind.”

Satisfactory terms of agreement were reached, and in 1806 Fulton was free and ready to return to that native land from which he had been away twenty years.

The building of a practicable steamboat had long been in his mind. He had corresponded on the subject with Chancellor Livingston, who had devoted much time and money to new inventions. Fulton, when in Paris, had experimented with models of steamboats, and had studied the records of what had already been done in that line. In 1802 he had started a course of calculations on the resistance of water, and the comparative advantages of the known means of propelling vessels. He had rejected the plan of using paddles or oars, and also of forcing water out of the stern of the vessel, and had retained the idea of the paddle-wheel. This he tried successfully on a small model that he built and used on a river that ran through the village of Plombières. He then built an experimental boat, sixty-six feet long and eight feet wide, and this he exhibited to a large audience of Parisians in August, 1803. His success led him to order certain parts of a steam-engine from the firm of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham, these to be shipped to America. Meantime Chancellor Livingston had obtained for himself and Fulton the exclusive right to navigate the waters of New York state by vessels propelled by fire or steam.

As soon as he reached America in December, 1806, Fulton started work on his boat. He engaged Charles Brownne, a ship-builder on the East River, to lay down the hull. He decided to name the vessel the Clermont, the name of Chancellor Livingston’s country-place on the Hudson, where Fulton had been a guest. The engine duly arrived from Birmingham and was carried to the shipyard. As a number of loafers and hangers-on about the docks threatened injury to “Fulton’s Folly,” as the building boat was called, he had to engage watchmen to guard his property. By August the boat was finished, and was moved by her own engine from the yards to the Jersey shore. She was one hundred and fifty feet long, thirteen feet wide, and drew two feet of water. Before she had gone a quarter of a mile both passengers and observers on the shore were satisfied that the steamboat was a thoroughly practicable vessel.

On Sunday, August 9, 1807, Fulton made a short trial trip of the Clermont, and wrote an account of it to Livingston. “Yesterday about 12 o’clock I put the steamboat in motion first with a paddle 8 inches broad, 3 feet long, with which I ran about one mile up the East River against a tide of about one mile an hour, it being nearly high water. I then anchored and put on another paddle 8 inches wide, 3 feet long, started again and then, according to my best observations, I went 3 miles an hour, that is two against a tide of one: another board of 8 inches was wanting, which had not been prepared, I therefore turned the boat and ran down with the tide—and turned her round neatly into the berth from which I parted. She answers the helm equal to anything that ever was built, and I turned her twice in three times her own length. Much has been proved by this experiment. First that she will, when in complete order, run up to my full calculations. Second, that my axles, I believe, will be sufficiently strong to run the engine to her full power. Third, that she steers well, and can be turned with ease.”

It was on August 17, 1807, that the Clermont made her first historic trip up the Hudson. At one o’clock she cast off from her dock near the State’s Prison, in what was called Greenwich Village, on the North River. The inventor described the voyage characteristically to a friend. He wrote, “The moment arrived in which the word was to be given for the boat to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, sad and weary. I read in their looks nothing but disaster, and almost repented of my efforts. The signal was given and the boat moved on a short distance and then stopped and became immovable. To the silence of the preceding moment, now succeeded murmurs of discontent, and agitations, and whispers and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated—‘I told you it was so; it is a foolish scheme: I wish we were well out of it.’

“I elevated myself upon a platform and addressed the assembly. I stated that I knew not what was the matter, but if they would be quiet and indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on or abandon the voyage for that time. This short respite was conceded without objection. I went below and examined the machinery, and discovered that the cause was a slight maladjustment of some of the work. In a short time it was obviated. The boat was again put in motion. She continued to move on. All were still incredulous. None seemed willing to trust the evidence of their own senses. We left the fair city of New York; we passed through the romantic and ever-varying scenery of the Highlands; we descried the clustering houses of Albany; we reached its shores,—and then, even then, when all seemed achieved, I was the victim of disappointment.

“Imagination superseded the influence of fact. It was then doubted if it could be done again, or if done, it was doubted if it could be made of any great value.”

But the Clermont, in spite of all prophecies to the contrary, had traveled under her own steam from New York to Albany, and the trip was the crowning event in Fulton’s career as inventor. At the time she made that first voyage the Clermont was a very simple craft, decked for a short distance at bow and stern, the engine open to view, and back of the engine a house like that on a canal-boat to shelter the boiler and provide an apartment for the officers. The rudder was of the pattern used on sailing-vessels, and was moved by a tiller. The boiler was of the same pattern used in Watt’s steam-engines, and was set in masonry. The condenser stood in a large cold-water cistern, and the weight of the masonry and the cistern greatly detracted from the boat’s buoyancy. She was so very unwieldy that the captains of other river boats, realizing the danger of the steamboat’s competition, were able to run into her, and make it appear that the fault was hers; and as a result she several times reached port with only a single wheel.

There were almost as many quaint descriptions of the boat as there were people who saw it. One described it as an “ungainly craft looking precisely like a backwoods sawmill mounted on a scow and set on fire.” Others said the Clermont appeared at night like a “monster moving on the waters defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke.” Some of the ignorant along the Hudson fell on their knees and prayed to be delivered from the monster. The boat must have been a very strange sight; pine wood was used for fuel, and when the engineer stirred the fire a torrent of sparks went shooting into the sky.

The boat was clumsy beyond question. The exposed machinery creaked and groaned, the unguarded paddle-wheels revolved ponderously and splashed a great deal of water, the tiller was badly placed for steering. Fulton quickly remedied some of the defects, and the Clermont that began to make regular runs from New York to Albany a little later was quite a different boat from that which made her maiden voyage on August 17th.

In spite of Fulton’s gloomy tone in his letter there were many among the men and women who made the first trip with him who were not dubious concerning the invention. As soon as the first difficulties were overcome and the boat was moving on a steady keel, the passengers, most of whom were close friends of Fulton and of Chancellor Livingston, broke into song. As they passed by the Palisades it is said they sang “Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonny Doon.” Fulton himself could not be overlooked. A contemporary described him: “Among a thousand individuals you might readily point out Robert Fulton. He was conspicuous for his gentle, manly bearing and freedom from embarrassment, for his extreme activity, his height, somewhat over six feet,—his slender yet energetic form and well accommodated dress, for his full and curly dark brown hair, carelessly scattered over his forehead and falling around his neck. His complexion was fair, his forehead high, his eyes dark and penetrating and revolving in a capacious orbit of cavernous depths; his brow was thick and evinced strength and determination; his nose was long and prominent, his mouth and lips were beautifully proportioned, giving the impress of eloquent utterance. Trifles were not calculated to impede him or damp his perseverance.”

Fulton was now forty-two years old, and famous on both sides of the Atlantic. He asked Harriet Livingston, a near relation of his friend the Chancellor, to become his wife. She accepted him, and he was warmly welcomed into that rich and influential family.

On September 2, 1807, Fulton advertised regular sailings of the Clermont between New York and Albany. These proved popular, and other routes were soon planned. That winter he made many changes in the vessel and worked out certain devices that he wished to patent. The name of Clermont was changed to the North River the following spring, and the reconstructed steamboat continued in regular service on the Hudson for a number of years. In the succeeding year he built other boats, the Rariton, to run from New York to New Brunswick, and The Car of Neptune as a second Hudson River boat. He was very much occupied perfecting new commercial schemes, protecting his patents from a horde of pirates, and planning to introduce his invention into Europe. Before his death in 1815, eight years after the Clermont’s first trip, he had built seventeen boats, among them the first steam war frigate, a torpedo boat, and the first steam ferry-boats with rounded ends to be used for approaching opposite shores.

A century has not dimmed Fulton’s fame, nor set aside his claim to be the practical inventor of the steamboat. He built the first one to be used in American waters, and his model was copied in all other countries. He carried his ideas to completion, and that, with his talent to observe and improve upon other men’s work, gave him his leading place among the world’s pioneers.

VIII
DAVY AND THE SAFETY-LAMP
1778-1829

Humphrey Davy, according to his contemporaries, could have chosen any one of several roads to fame. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said of him, “Had not Davy been the first chemist, he probably would have been the first poet of his age.” Among many activities he invented the safety-lamp, the object of which was to protect miners from the perils of exploding fire-damp. George Stephenson invented a similar device at about the same time, or a little earlier, but Davy’s lamp was the one most generally adopted, and his claim as inventor is commonly recognized, while Stephenson’s fame is secure with the perfection of the steam-locomotive and the railroad.

Davy was born at Penzance in Cornwall December 17, 1778, the eldest son in a family of five children. More alert and imaginative than other boys, and with an uncommonly good memory, he made great headway at Mr. Coryton’s grammar school, where he went when he was six. Coleridge’s opinion of him may have been correct, for history says that he was a fluent writer of English and Latin verses while still a schoolboy, and that he could tell stories well enough to hold an audience of his teachers and neighbors. He liked fine language and the arts of speech, and, according to his brother, Dr. John Davy, he cultivated those arts in his walks. Once when he was taking a bottle of medicine to a sick woman in the country he began to declaim a stirring speech, and at its climax threw the bottle away. He never noticed its loss until he reached the patient, and then wondered what could have become of the vial. The bottle was found next morning in a hay-field adjoining the path Davy had taken.

When he was fourteen he left Mr. Coryton’s school for the Truro Grammar School, where he stayed for a year. Here he was famed for his good-humor and a very original turn of mind. A school friend, reminiscing about Humphrey, told of a walk several of them took one hot day. “Whilst others complained of the heat,” said he, “and whilst I unbuttoned my waistcoat, Humphrey appeared with his great-coat close-buttoned up to his chin, for the purpose, as he declared, of keeping out the heat. This was laughed at at the time, but it struck me then, as it appears to me now, as evincing originality of thought and an indisposition to be led by the example of others.”

This originality of thought and love of experiment for its own sake were to be chief characteristics of the future scientist.

His school education was finished when he was fifteen, and he returned home, where he studied French in a desultory fashion, and devoted most of his time to fishing, of which he was always very fond. His father’s death made him realize that as the eldest of the sons he must shoulder the responsibility for the family’s support, and, all his natural tastes lying in that direction, he decided to become a physician.

A practicing surgeon and apothecary of Penzance, Bingham Borlase, was willing to take Davy as an apprentice, and the youth began work and study in his office. But the boy was no ordinary apprentice. He became almost at once an omnivorous student and writer. He laid out a plan of study that included theology, astronomy, logic, mathematics, Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew, and he wrote essays, remarkably mature and well-phrased, in a series of note-books that he kept in the office. Poetry he wrote also, filled with love of the sea that circled his native Cornwall, and the great cliffs and moorlands that make that part of England one of the most picturesque spots in the world.

His work with Mr. Borlase brought him into the field of chemistry when he was nineteen. It was a field of magic to him. He read two books, Lavoisier’s “Elements of Chemistry,” and Nicholson’s “Dictionary of Chemistry,” and rushed from them to experiment for himself. His bedroom was his laboratory. His tools were old bottles, glasses, tobacco-pipes, teacups, and such odds and ends as he could find. When he needed fire he went to the kitchen. The owner of the house, Mr. Tonkin, was an old friend of the Davy family, and very fond of Humphrey, but the amateur experiments were almost too much for him. Said he, after he had watched some more than usually noisy combustion at the fire, “This boy, Humphrey, is incorrigible. Was there ever so idle a dog? He will blow us all into the air.” But Humphrey minded no arguments nor objections; he was studying the effects of acids and alkalies on vegetable colors, the kind of air that was to be found in the vesicles of common varieties of seaweed, and the solution and precipitation of metals. The work was all-engrossing; it occupied every spare moment of his time and thought.

If any greater stimulus to scientific study had been needed it would have been supplied to young Davy by his acquaintance with Gregory Watt, the son of the inventor James Watt. Gregory came to board at Mrs. Davy’s house when he was twenty-one, and Humphrey nineteen. He was a splendid companion, and possessed of a remarkably brilliant mind. In a short time the two youths had become inseparable friends, experimenting together, and taking walks to the mines and quarries in the neighborhood of Penzance in search of minerals for study. It was an ideal friendship, incomparably valuable for Davy. But Gregory Watt died when he was twenty-eight. “Gregory was a noble fellow,” Davy wrote to a friend, “and would have been a great man.”

In the meantime the young physician’s apprentice had been lured away from Penzance. Dr. Beddoes had established what he styled a Pneumatic Institution at Clifton, the object of which was to try the medicinal effects of different gases on consumptive patients. Davy, only twenty, had been offered the position of director, and had accepted. His old friend Mr. Tonkin, who had thought to see Humphrey become the leading physician of Penzance, was so much put out with this change of plan that he altered his will and revoked a legacy he had intended for Davy.

Filled with the ardor of research Davy went on with his experiments at Clifton. He discovered silica in the epidermis of the stems of weeds, corn, and grasses. He experimented with nitrous oxide (laughing gas) for ten months until he had thoroughly learned its intoxicating effects. Often he jeopardized his life, and once nearly lost it, by breathing carburetted hydrogen. He published the results of his more important experiments. When he was twenty-one he issued his “Essays on Heat and Light.” He experimented with galvanic electricity, and increased the powers of Volta’s Galvanic Pile. Moreover he outlined and partly drafted an epic poem on the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. The total is a surprising catalogue of industries for the young Clifton Director.

His ardor had worn him out, and he was forced to take a holiday at Penzance. His reputation as a rising scientist had reached the little Cornish town, and he was given a hearty welcome. He loved his own country and never lost his delight in her natural beauties. Nor did he ever forget his own days in the grammar school, and in his will he directed that a certain sum of money should be paid to the master each year “on condition that the boys may have a holiday on his birthday.”

Davy had already made influential friends, and one of them, Dr. Hope, the professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, was to give him his next step forward. Dr. Hope knew Davy’s works on heat, nitrous oxide, and galvanic electricity, and he recommended the young scientist to Count Rumford for the professorship of chemistry in the Royal Philosophical Institution in London, which Count Rumford had been instrumental in founding. Davy wrote to his mother that this was “as honorable as any scientific appointment in the kingdom, with an income of at least five hundred pounds a year.”

He went to London in 1801, and there he had the great satisfaction of meeting many scientific men whose names and work were well known to him. Six weeks after he arrived he began his first course of lectures, taking for his subject the history of galvanism, and the various methods of accumulating galvanic influence. The Philosophical Magazine said of the new lion, “The sensation created by his first course of lectures at the Institution, and the enthusiastic admiration which they obtained, is at this period hardly to be imagined. Men of the first rank and talent,—the literary and the scientific, the practical and the theoretical,—blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the young, all crowded, eagerly crowded, the lecture-room. His youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations and well-conducted experiments, excited universal attention and unbounded applause. Compliments, invitations, and presents were showered upon him in abundance from all quarters; his society was courted by all, and all appeared proud of his acquaintance.”

Davy was an eloquent, enthusiastic, forceful speaker. He prepared his lectures with the greatest care, and he delivered them with that attention to dramatic effect which is instinctive in all really great speakers. Coleridge said, “I attend Davy’s lectures to increase my stock of metaphors,” and there were many others who went to hear the young chemist for other reasons than a liking for science. He had his own theories of the arts of public address. “Great powers,” said he, “have never been exerted independent of strong feelings. The rapid arrangement of ideas from their various analogies to the equally rapid comparisons of these analogies, with facts uniformly occurring during the progress of discovery, have existed only in those minds where the agency of strong and various motives is perceived—of motives modifying each other, mingling with each other, and producing that fever of emotion which is the joy of existence and the consciousness of life.”

In addition to his lectures Davy worked hard in the well-stocked laboratory of the Institution, where he was supplied with a corps of capable assistants. His researches covered a very large part of the field of chemistry, and he was indefatigable in running down any new idea which his active brain chanced to hit upon. In his vacations from London he went to the farthest regions of the British Isles, spending considerable time in the north of Ireland and the Hebrides. Here he studied the geological structures, and collected all the information he could in regard to agriculture. Anything to do with natural science interested him. He sketched a great deal, and he was forever asking questions of all the countrymen he met. His questions made him famous in many a hamlet, where such inquisitiveness had never been known before.

Shortly after he had moved to London he had been asked to investigate astringent plants in connection with tanning. To this end he visited tan-yards and farmers, and in 1802 began to deliver a course of lectures on “The Connection of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology.” These lectures proved remarkably popular, and for ten years he repeated them at the meetings of the Board of Agriculture. They were later published in book form, and so great was their interest that they were translated into almost every European language. The Edinburgh Review, that dean of British critics, said, “We feel grateful for his having thus suspended for a time the labors of original investigation, in order to apply the principles and discoveries of his favorite science to the illustration and improvement of an art which, above all others, ministers to the wants and comforts of man.”

When his agricultural researches were finished he went back to his studies with the voltaic pile or battery. He discovered that potash and soda can be decomposed, with the resultant metals of potassium and sodium. When he made this discovery he was so delighted that he danced about the room, and was too excited to finish the experiment for some time.

He had worked too hard, and soon after this discovery he fell ill. For days all London watched for the bulletins of the young chemist’s condition. Fortunately he recovered, and in time went back to the work which was proving so invaluable for the world of science.

The Royal Institution now provided him with a voltaic battery that was four times as powerful as any that had previously been constructed. With this he made numberless chemical discoveries. The Royal Society had made him a fellow when he was twenty-five years old, and one of its secretaries when he was twenty-nine. His London lectures grew continually more popular. The Dublin Society invited him to lecture in that city, and his course at once attracted the greatest attention. He was already the scientific lion of England, but withal a very modest and unassuming lion. Cuvier said, “Davy, not yet thirty-two, in the opinion of all who could judge of such labors, held the first rank among the chemists of this or of any other age.” The National Institute of France awarded him the prize that had been established by Napoleon for the greatest discovery made by means of galvanism. Then, in 1812, when he was thirty-three, he was knighted by the Prince Regent.

Sir Humphrey Davy, as he now was, married Mrs. Appreece, a woman of many talents and unusual intelligence. She was rich, and soon after their marriage Davy was able to resign his professorship at the Royal Institution, which he had held for twelve years, and devote himself to original research and to travel. Carrying a portable chemical apparatus for his studies, Sir Humphrey and Lady Davy went first to Scotland, and then to France, Italy, and Germany. They met the most prominent men of the age in those countries. These men found the famous chemist interested in everything about him, as much of a poet as a scientist. In Rome he wrote a sonnet to the sculptor Canova, and the literary circles of Italy proclaimed him a poet after their own heart.

Davy was now one of the foremost chemists of the world, but he could as yet hardly lay claim to the title of inventor. He had been an ambitious man, and had once said that he had escaped the temptations that lay in wait for many men because of “an active mind, a deep ideal feeling of good, and a look toward future greatness.” That future greatness had always been in his thoughts, and had been one of the compelling powers in his great chemical discoveries. But beyond this thought of greatness was a very deep and earnest desire to help his fellow men. So when the chance to do this offered he took advantage of it at once.

Explosions of coal-gas were only too common in the mines of England. They were almost always fatal to the miners, and formed the greatest peril of those who labored underground. In 1812 a terrible explosion occurred in a leading English mine, and caused the death of almost a hundred miners. The mine had caught on fire, and had to be closed at the mouth, which meant certain destruction to those within. The catastrophe was so great that the biggest mine-owners met to see whether some protection against such accidents could not be devised. After much discussion they appointed a committee to call on Sir Humphrey Davy and ask him to investigate the possibilities for them.

Davy realized that here lay his opportunity to be of real service to men, the goal he had always had in mind. He took up the question, experimented with fire-damp, and found that it was in reality light carburetted hydrogen. He visited many mines, and took into careful consideration the conditions under which the men worked. For months he investigated and experimented, and at length, in 1815, he constructed what he called the safety-lamp. This was an oil lamp which had a chimney or cage of wire gauze. The gauze held the flame of the lamp from passing through and igniting the fire-damp outside. It was only possible for a very little of the fire-damp to penetrate the gauze and such as did was held harmless prisoner. The cage allowed air to pass and light to escape, and although by the combustion of the fire-damp the wire gauze might become red hot, it was still efficient as a safety-lamp.

Davy’s safety-lamp proved exactly what was needed to act as protection from exploding fire-damp. It was tried under all conditions and served admirably. George Stephenson had worked out a somewhat similar safety-lamp at about the same time, and his was used in the collieries around Newcastle. In the rest of England Davy’s lamp was at once adopted. All miners were equipped with either the Davy lamp or the “Geordie” lamp, as the other was called, and the mine fatalities from fire-damp immediately decreased. This lamp is still the main safeguard of those who have to contend with dangerous explosive gases in mines all over the world.

Friends urged Davy to patent his lamp, and thus ensure himself a very considerable income from its sale. But he said, “I never thought of such a thing: my sole object was to serve the cause of humanity; and if I have succeeded, I am amply rewarded in the gratifying reflection of having done so. I have enough for all my views and purposes; more wealth could not increase either my fame or my happiness. It might undoubtedly enable me to put four horses to my carriage; but what would it avail me to have it said that Sir Humphrey drives his carriage and four?”